MISS JUNETEENTH

 Turquoise Jones (Nicole Beharie), a former Miss Juneteenth pageant winner, lives in a small town in Texas and is a hard-working single mother… sort of, she has a deadbeat, part-time husband Ronnie (Kendrick Sampson) who is good for nothing, comes and goes when he pleases and sponges off her like a leech. Turquoise is trying to live her life through her 15-year-old Kai (Alexis Chikaeze), to correct her wrongs and past regrets just to give her daughter the opportunity she missed out.

Winning the Miss Juneteenth pageant gives you free scholarship that leads you to opportunities in securing a successful but promising career / life.

Unfortunately, Turquoise messed up and made many bad life choices but is so determined that Kai won’t mess up and will live the dream she had always wanted for herself. Turquoise continuously encounters many roadblocks and struggles, but she is one determined, strong-minded woman, who is capable of re-evaluating and assess the situation and figures out another way to ensure that nothing will get in their way this time.

I had the misconception that it was about pageant, but it was deceiving, underrated with stellar performance by Nicole Beharie. You could actually feel her pain and frustrations, trying to get out of the rut-hole, repeated for many generations and trying to break-free out of the loophole, by daring to do something different. But you can also understand why Kai is so rebellious, it is not the life she wants and evidently shows and tells her mother repeatedly.

A very touching mother / daughter story and lessons to learn from. Definitely recommend this movie. I shall leave you with a quote, by Roger Crawford, that best sums up this movie “Being challenged in life is inevitable, being defeated is optional.”